Larsen Ice Shelf

The Larsen Ice Shelf is a long, fringing ice shelf in the northwest part of the Weddell Sea, extending along the east coast of Antarctic Peninsula from Cape Longing to the area just southward of Hearst Island. Named for Captain Carl Anton Larsen, the master of the Norwegian whaling vessel Jason, who sailed along the ice front as far as 68°10' South during December 1893. In finer detail, the Larsen Ice Shelf is a series of three shelves that occupy (or occupied) distinct embayments along the coast. From north to south, the three segments are called Larsen A (the smallest), Larsen B, and Larsen C (the largest) by researchers who work in the area.

Larsen Ice Shelf

The Larsen Ice Shelf is a long, fringing ice shelf in the northwest part of the Weddell Sea, extending along the east coast of Antarctic Peninsula from Cape Longing to the area just southward of Hearst Island. Named for Captain Carl Anton Larsen, the master of the Norwegian whaling vessel Jason, who sailed along the ice front as far as 68°10' South during December 1893. In finer detail, the Larsen Ice Shelf is a series of three shelves that occupy (or occupied) distinct embayments along the coast. From north to south, the three segments are called Larsen A (the smallest), Larsen B, and Larsen C (the largest) by researchers who work in the area.

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In 2002, Antarctica’s Larsen B iceshelf broke apart in less than a month, and afterward some of the adjacent glaciers sped up by as much as eight times. The shattering of Larsen B shocked scientists, since no one had previously realized that an iceshelf could disappear so ......

About 1,100 miles away, on the other side of the Antarctic Peninsula, another international team will study the Weddell Sea, the birthplace of a Delaware-sized iceberg that broke off from the Larsen C iceshelf in 2017. The iceshelf, like others that fringe Antarctica, helps slow glacial ice’s slide into the sea....

The ship’s destination is the Larsen C iceshelf where a trillion tonne iceberg, four times the size of Greater London, calved away in July 2017 ... But if the Weddell Sea expedition can reach the Larsen C iceshelf, the fourth largest on the continent, the researchers will have an ......

Encompassing around 6,200 square kilometers (2,400 square miles) of ice, the melting of this iceshelf alone could raise sea levels by over 3.3 meters (11 feet) ...Nevertheless, the situation in WestAntartica is still the burning issue, most clearly seen by the break-up of the LarsenIceShelf....

Research will be focused on the Larsen C IceShelf to provide valuable new insights into the local ecosystem, documenting the rich and little-studied marine environment, surveying the seafloor and under the ice and documenting the little-studied biological systems that lie beneath the iceshelf....

But, you would be wrong ... So how are these perfect icebergs formed? All icebergs form when a piece or sheet of ice breaks away from a large iceshelf or glacier. And because of ice's innate crystal structure, it tends to break along straight lines ... This iceberg broke off of the Larsen C IceShelf in Antarctica ... ....

The above video, as reported by the ScienceAlert, highlights the collapse of the Larsen B iceshelf in 2002 and the journey of B-15 with a surface area of about 11,000 square kilometres ... Certainly, the calving and breakup of B-15 and the collapse of Larsen B iceshelf in 2002 are ......

The rectangular iceberg was thought to be freshly calved from Larsen C, which in July 2017 released the massive A68 iceberg, a chunk of ice about the size of the state of Delaware. 'The berg was so clean-cut that it was reasonable to assume it might have very recently calved from the Larsen C iceshelf,' NASA said....

Experts say they believe the iceberg fractured in May from LarsenC, a large iceshelf fed by several glaciers on the east side of the peninsula ...Larsen A, an iceshelf farther north on the peninsula, broke up in 1995 ... When an iceberg breaks off from a shelf of floating ice like Larsen C, there's no friction controlling how it breaks up....

A sharp-angled, tabular iceberg floats among sea ice just off of the Larsen C iceshelf in the northern Antarctic Peninsula. Photo. Supplied to Reuters Icebergs that appear cut by human hand are not so unusual, Sue Cook writes ... ....